


Maystadt

by Christer_Bleu



Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass (2007)
Genre: Maystadt AU, Other, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-09
Updated: 2016-02-11
Packaged: 2018-05-19 06:12:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5956644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Christer_Bleu/pseuds/Christer_Bleu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Angel: Messenger, Hierarchy, disobedience...<br/>Candle: Meaning, Understanding, learning...<br/>Compass: Measurement, Mathematics, science...<br/>Baby: The future, Malleability, helplessness...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Moon: Chastity, Mystery, the uncanny...

**Author's Note:**

> For anyone who does care you can keep track of what I'm doing with the pseudonyms you can check out the entirety of team [CVRN](https://teamcvrn.wordpress.com/)
> 
> If anyone has a prompt, question, comment or concern you contact [Team CVRN](mailto:teamcvrn@yahoo.com).  
> .

That woman, that terrible girl, was waking.

She lay silently in her bunk, the steady warm weight of Saridormi lying in the crook of her arm soothing for reasons she didn’t quite understand nor would she come closer to understanding in the coming months despite her best efforts. Neither was sleeping, neither had rested for any significant period of time nor would they for long hours still. That thing that churned endlessly between her ears kept them awake, tormenting them without fail at every opportunity, laughing cruelly when the solutions to the problems she mulled slipped away on a whisper of wind. Fortunately or unfortunately **they’d** grown to be quiet resilient and even more inquisitive.

Across the room the stirrings of her roommate and the tiny sparrow that had rested in a gilded cage suspended from the roof with his head tucked beneath a tiny wing had called a halt to her experimentation for the night. Silently she cursed her brazen decision to continue even as true dawn began in the east, her eyes able to differentiate between the white and black thread taped securely inside the window sill. It had been pure luck that she had managed to close the window, hide her notes beneath a scattering of homework and slide beneath the sheets before that terrible girl began to wake in truth.

As the faint twittering of the bird began to grow, their breathing changing from the rhythmic depth of sleep to the light, airier notes of wakefulness, she pulled Saridormi closer and buried her face into the silky fur of her side. That terrible creature she had no desire to see before she absolutely had too, the emotion that that girl thought was hidden was as easy to read as the mathematics that now covered her desk. Despite this it wasn’t as if her roommate was the incarnation of Beelzebub itself or as if the woman was utterly and completely without redeeming qualities it was just that this creature was the primary enemy of scientific process and mind personified.

That woman, that terrible girl, was as if all the concentrated evil of the Magisterium stripped away around the edges and reformed in a forge of hatred into five feet six inches of feminine fury. That woman was a force of nature that would likely remove every anbaric lamp and fixture in the school if the local Magistrate complained about a burnt out bulb. Out spoken in each subject that woman often offended professors and ended lectures as the open challenges so brazenly issued with the knowledge that the Magisterium would erase each mark on the record and enfold and elevate that terrible girl among their ranks. Despite this the nature of this woman was gentle and kind, any and all reprehensible actions taken were, in fact, the result of intentionally shortened intellectual growth encouraged by a family as deeply enshrined in the Magisterium as it was possible to be so far from their seat of power.

Truly, this woman, this terrible girl, was a product of equally terrible parents.

That terrible girl was waking with those soft sounds of waking, waking to praise The Authority in that early morning service slowly grinding to arousal across the courtyard below. When that propaganda began, that really, that dose of poison honeyed by the willingness of the souls in the pews, sweetened by so much of that sugar. She would have three long hours to record her findings and prepare for yet another day.

Beneath her cheek the muscles rippling beneath sleek fur froze for a heart stopping instant, a coil of fear clenching tightly in her belly so suddenly she struggled to breath evenly, convincingly. She struggled for an instant, **they** froze for an instant, knowing **that** if they slipped in front of that terrible girl it would draw that patronizing ire. Drawing attention to herself, to themselves, more than she already did through no fault of her own, directly, had historically proven disastrous. That she - **they** \- were so different from everyone else in such a fundamental way that was so ephemeral and just as intangible was set in such a way that it seemed that the very forces that that shaped the universe had selected her to be formed of either something greater perhaps something less.

She - **they** \- had not chosen to be thus nor had she - **they** \- changed in such a dramatic way in seventeen years of life so thoroughly that it would account for the oddities that differentiated her - **them** \- from her - **their** \- peers. From birth she - **they** \- all of her had been thus and in childhood she - **they** \- had not seemed so unusual appearing as she was: yet another child with dirty hands and scabby knees left to run wild through the green of Aurora with the others. But then, others had settled and she - **they** \- had not.

She - **they** \- had retained a severely limited capacity for change long beyond the point where others looked upon these new clusters of children with nostalgia and bitter sweet sentiment for both the freedom and possibilities that these youth possessed. Perhaps, one day when their own issue was among the children so carelessly at play they would recognize that emotion as lamentation but until then those like that terrible girl, so set within their own boundaries, would continue to project the insecurities harbored by this final, seemingly penultimate shape, onto her, the whole of her, them and her - **their** \- ability to change.

The phenomena was not one that had been observed in the past if the histories of the Magisterium were to be trusted and all independent, free thinking, scientific, inquisitive, rational – heretical – minds knew they, those histories, could not.

If they could then she, all of her, could not exist in such a perfect universe.


	2. Moon: Chastity, Mystery, the uncanny...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Moon: Chastity, Mystery, the uncanny...

Such an uncommon time, this time of disbelief and curses.

This time wherein the sounds of praise and worship echoed faintly across the courtyard on this windless morning, wherein they could complete their final observations or review the transcripts of the texts she had secured in the days before not daring to light even a candle or find a torch with which she might see the pages on the desk before her. This tenuous time wherein the quieter of their differences once more made itself known, wherein she may record and review her work by the light of the anbaric lanterns outside. 

The lanterns provide just enough light to indirectly see the neat words pressed carefully into the yellow lined of her notes, the text printed in their vaguely crooked lines on the white paper from the lab, and track Saridormi as she lay in her favorite cradle in the branches just outside the window. But that was a clearly observable oddity, one that they might explain away as a quirk shared by many others with viable precedence – the distance between that a man may travel from his daemon was variable with people capable of traversing hundreds of yards from their daemon a side show attraction for decades. But even that feat that would kill a normal man was trumped by the witches.

Or **had** been trumped by the witches in the time when they walked among men.

The witches, who were so unlike men, that many believed today that the stories of witches from their parents and grandparents youth was a myth perpetrated with the enthusiasm of Saint Nickolas bringing gifts for good children on Yule as they slept by shimmying down a chimney or through a cracked window. This was, of course, preposterous, even The Authority could not disprove the existence of witches nor erase them entirely from the histories so they must exist though they chose places far from the prying eyes of the children of men. A sentiment that she, they, shared with the witches.

And since these mystical women surely existed; even if the tales that were told to young children to quiet them in the dark were mostly fantastical were these stories stripped to the most fundamental of things that connected them all together the witches presented such a queer mystery unto themselves that it seemed destined to remain just that, a queer mystery. One that might not have an answer or one that the Authority did not approve of which seemed to be the truth of it, witches as they had been presented through all of these tales clearly were not human. Their inhumanity seemed to be the only thing that even the oldest of stories demonstrated consistently.

Yet, should anyone delve into the subject of witches – for academic pursuits, surely – all that even the most careful and diligent inquiries would yield were a series of journals kept by a Magistrate that had converted a young witch of the Taymyr Clan into a devout woman. As one would expect all accounts were suitably scrubbed of any real information and anything that might be construed as immoral on the part of the Magistrate, Magisterium, and Authority wrapped in a thick coat of bias so as it be neigh useless to anyone not seeking to confirm their own beliefs. Still she, **they** , had convinced the librarian - a weathered matron with a soft sympathetic heart for a girl who was unnatural through no fault of her own – to print the full content of the journals for them to investigate and she, **they** , had found some information that either bore looking into or was a concrete fact around which she may base further investigations.

> 1\. Witches are organized into clans that hold to no borders of men nor to their own for longer than a season.  
>  2\. Each of these clans is Ruled by a queen. 

The notes that the Magistrate had scribbled almost illegibly into the empty spaces transcripts of the conversations one of his officials had had with the young witch, whose name seemed to never be mentioned, had demonstrated a great distaste for this revelation. She, **they** , suspected that the only reasons that these documentations were left mostly unchanged because of the unnecessary commentary in slightly fainter black ink all over the page. Had the Magistrate not decreed that the seemingly nonsensical, ever changing borders that defined the territories of any particular clan should be restrained to the states and countries defined by men it likely wouldn’t have been mentioned in the final print.

>   
>  _Should a council of men rule these **witches** the boundaries between them wouldn’t change at the faintest of whims… _
> 
> 3\. There were no male witches? 

The revelation that the witches took human men as mates for a season or two before moving on had been a notion that persisted in the folklore, something that the Magistrate had decreed made this still unnamed witch a harlot. It was pure speculation and perhaps the most baseless of her assertions but one that she, they, nonetheless believed to be true.

> 4\. A witches’ daemon is somehow greater than the daemon of a human, is comprised of much more than the daemon of a human, is not defined or limited in the same way as the daemon of a human. 

The fourth, the one which they more adamantly believed though the evidence of this was purely anecdotal in these records, off handed comments that the witches daemon -a tern- seemed unbothered by the things that his witch was doing and was often not seen for days at a time before returning with some small trinket valuable in the way that the trinkets of the witches were valuable – a patronizingly indulgent way of saying that they were valuable in the way that the treasures of a child were valuable. Yet this fourth assertion was supported by far more evidence than the belief that witches were capable of flying as easily through the air as their daemons which were always, according to each and every account given on the subject, avian in nature.

There was a part of her that recognized this fourth was absolute truth. It was the same part of her that recognized that between them, herself and Saridormi, there was more than that which existed between that terrible, unfortunate girl and her swallow. The same part that drove her to not think of the whole of herself as _‘I’_ and _‘me’_ but as **‘we’** and **‘us’** ; that differentiated between the _‘she’_ that was her and the **‘they’** that was all of her physical self; that recognized **‘they’** – a man and his daemon- not as two individuals but as two separate parts of the same individual representing…

What?

 _“That somehow in the development of the English language, all languages that **we** are aware of, no one bothered to develop the diction that would allow proper grammar to encompass this particular though exercise is a major failure in design.” _ This a wry thought that came to her with alarming frequency to them both.

A truth, but the how and why of that was not the question at hand.

That question was the question that no one answered, that the Authority either knew or did not want known.

What was a daemon?

Which inevitably lead the inquisitive mind to more questions in the logical, sequential manner that few other inquiries managed such was: What force allowed a child’s daemon to change on the merest whim, left the daemon of a grown man in one state until his death, changed a daemon of a woman who survived a traumatic accident, and yet allowed Saridormi to retain three forms well into **their** maturity? What happened to a daemon in death? Why was separation physically and emotionally painful to some but not necessarily to others?

Was separation to the degree of witches possible in those who were not witches?

Sitting back from her desk she spared a brief glance at the two threads tapped in the jam of the window, the white thread becoming more and more defined as the service below wore on and the sun rose higher and higher until it was a lime rim against the horizon visible to the eye – farmers dawn. Something compelled her, **them** to lock eyes matching burnished gold and slate grey across the distance between them, perhaps **they** were thinking the same thoughts again. Settled in the uppermost branches of the towering oak – soon to be a problem to the academy’s maintenance staff though how **they** knew that as fact neither could be entirely sure- Saridormi was curled within her favorite hollow was perhaps thirty or more feet away but the stretch was a faint twinge in that place in her gut that was neither flesh nor spine but deeper.

What was it that made this, **us** , different? So much so that this did not hurt **them** as it hurt others? What marked Saridormi was instantly queer to even the most perfect of strangers who had not yet her speak or seen her infrequent changes? And that voice... that voice that was half remembered from sleep or perhaps the past which sought to torment her in those moments before sleep.

> _This is our decision, that no one might know us so that none may question this decision. They are not to know we were not meant to know nor reveal why this matters. This is our decision. We have ensured that we will remain thus, unknowing and unknowable. **This is our decision.**_


	3. Marionette: Obedience, Submissions, Grace

That woman, that terrible girl, had returned when the sun had risen as a brilliant yellow-orange disk in the east with its robes of rosy gold and regal pinks, painting long pale blue shadows across the courtyard. 

It wasn’t as though they did not know her name; it would prove impossible for them not to know the names of school mates that have persisted within their classes from the first days of grammar school. Some, many, had moved on but it seemed as if they were destined to escape this woman only should they choose to pursue university in faraway Cathay. This thought was as humorous as it was preposterous. Who was Lillian Gautier to determine her own fate or to decide for herself to continue her studies independently?

Surely only Tanius had the authority to decide what it was that Lillian could do but was not Tanius but a negligible fragment of Lillian and thus, somehow he was had in lesser regard in the eyes of the True Authority than Lillian herself? But what was Tanius other than a false image of a lesser being then that of a man, a reflection of her inner desire to be worthy of the True Authority’s approval and favor –to be a man in other words. Where, according to the same school of thought, the daemon of a man was the reflection of his deepest desire – to have a being which was not his equal that which he could rule over and that would give him sons.

How does one then explain the existence of female children and the frequency with they were born if this were true? How then, does one explain the existence of those like them, those with no complimentary, balancing energy but was composed entirely of one?

Truly, they mourned for those like Lillian and Tanius, those who so falsely believe that the Authority’s interpretation of that which had no proper diction nor grammar was the truth of this world. While Lillian pitied them for her false belief that she did not, in the deepest desire of their heart, wish to become worthy of the True Authority; they pitied her because she believed that to be true. But then were a more accomplished liar, far more skilled at keeping their own council.

Still they smiled at her at her, mustering the image that she projected outwards to the whole of the Eastern Ridge Academy. Cheerfully pleasant, mindful and quiet, seemingly oblivious to their strangeness, perhaps they were thought to be a touch slow but sweet enough to make up for it. Conformity or reversion to the mean, either or.

“Good Morning, Gautier.” They never used her first name that would imply a familiarity or invite a familiarity which they did not wish.

Were the world different perhaps the could reach out to her and show her things different than what she learned. That there was another way to live, that she had not done something to damn herself just seconds after her soul’s creation.

> _There is nothing atop the tower of god._

“Good morning, Parley.” They noted the hesitation there that she had not wanted to use such unfamiliar terms, but that was fine. “Did you sleep well?”


	4. Sword: Justice, Fortitude, The Church

Saridormi was the first to make note of Magister Nickolas and the attention with which he focused on the students as they hurried from the cafeteria to the first classes of the day. The faint twinge of their connection drew forth the brightest smile which she was capable of even as Saridormi came close enough to brush against her calf as she walked. 

Any other day **they** would have continued onto class, ignoring Lillian and Tainus as thoroughly as was polite but the attention of the Magister and the shifting of the Magisterium’s focus on the _youth_ was troubling. For whatever reason Magister Nickolas had begun flexing his metaphorical muscles unnecessarily, making note of miscreants, vagabonds, delinquents, and people like **them**. He was one of the few men who had the power to keep students on campus for special considerations during the weekends which, traditionally belonged to students. Eastern Ridge Academy offered five and seven day programs which allowed the students to return to their families, if chosen by Magister Nickolas the student in question was sequestered in the chapel for counseling for an indeterminate amount of time.

Technically, the Magister was only capable of holding her for two years before the Magisterium could not claim to be ensuring the moral compass of the youth was well aligned as they were legally adults and therefore capable of making their own decisions. Despite that fact, no one left before being deemed fit in the eyes of the Authority, preferring, instead, to devote themselves to scripture, studies and penance to absolve themselves of some perceived sin or another or to clear their names from whatever list they were placed upon. Leaving early could result in incarceration or execution for being a _thought criminal_. And if there was a list of potential thought criminals in existence **they** were surely on it thanks in no small part to their father’s profession.

Their father was a well respected scholar who had seen it fit to shape **them** in his own image: a free thinking spirit who questioned anything and everything and thus was capable of making an informed decision and form rational opinions that could be backed up by logic.

As much as **they** loved him at times **they** cursed to dance around the Magisterium’s agents, around Magister Nickolas today, for the duration of **their** natural life or until **they** were deemed of no threat to the Magisterium. On a day where **they** had slept only long enough to feel worse the dance was all the more dangerous, should they fail **their** odds of escaping any time in the next few years was statistically unlikely. For **them** to be at the mercy of the Magisterium was to be akin to a life sentence and today **they** were feeling the pressure.

It was a fate worse than death for the scholars and that was without taking the rumors into account.

The rumors.

There would always be rumors, had always been rumors but the more recent had likely begun as a minor truth. What had happened to Flint Greengrass after the delinquent had been caught drunk in town last year, snapped away from class he had only recently returned. He had returned so changed that even Lauren had been torn from the shape of an eagle to that of a bear. Perhaps he had simply found his faith or had been paid to behave or _brainwashed_.

And maybe it was insignificant compared to those other rumors.

The darker rumors that no one mentioned aloud. 

Ultimately it didn’t matter what had happened to Mr. Greengrass to **them**. **They** were far more concerned with the freedom of the weekend and home was far too tempting of a prize for obedience, a place where they could relax. The only scrutiny **they** would receive would concern **their** well-being and schooling and when satisfied the game of questions would begin. The philosophical debates that began at dawn and ended only after the Parleys had retired for the night would begin again with a vengeance at breakfast. A far more favorable outcome than any that could come from imprisonment, even under the guise of voluntary submission, could hope for.

So Saridormi wound between her legs as she walked she summoned her most genuine smile for the kindly young man who served as Eastern Ridge’s Magister and stopped to personally greet him and comment on the beauty of the day before he kissed her forehead paternally and shooed her off to class.


End file.
